Durkheim

We can perceive the generality for the propagation of the trends of the groups for the society, for example. A time identified and characterized the social facts, the concern of Durkheim was directed for the necessary behavior to the scientist, so that its study it really got scientific bases. For Durkheim, as for all the positivistas, he would not have scientific explanation if the researcher did not keep certain distance and neutrality in relation to the facts, protecting the objetividade of its analysis. She was necessary that the sociologist left of side its personal values and feelings in relation to the event to be studied, for not having scientific text of and allowing the distortion of the reality of the facts.

Looking for to guarantee to Sociology a so efficient method how much the developed one for natural sciences, Durkheim advised the sociologist to face the social facts as things, exteriors. They would have to be measured, to be observed independently and to be compared of what the individuals they thought or they declared its respect. These formularizations would be only opinions, individual judgments of value that could serve of pointers of the social facts, but mask the laws of social organization, whose rationality alone is accessible to the scientist. When choosing its method of research, the sociologist must select a group of phenomena whose common exterior characters previously are defined, and analyze all the correspondents to this definition. When knowing that one same cause of the origin to one exactly effect, the explanation of a complex social fact requires the knowledge of its development through all the types of society. Inside of the positivista tradition of which Durkheim was part, the society could be understood in the same way that the phenomena of the nature.